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Terrapin or Gopher Soup

A soup made from a large fresh water terrapin simmered with bacon, cloves, allspice, pepper, wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Terrapin or Gopher Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the terrapin and place it in a pot with 2 quarts of water, bacon, cloves, allspice, salt, black pepper, and red pepper.

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Thicken and brown the soup before serving.

  4. Add a glass of wine with grated nutmeg just before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Terrapin
Provides the main body and flavour of the soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to finish the soup.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour to the broth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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